2008 Internet Movie Poster Awards - Not So Serious Awards

Most Deceptive Review: Goes to the UK quad of The Hottie and the Nottie for touting it as "The number one film". The small print informs us that it is number one on the IMDB's bottom 100 films. Alas, it has since dropped to #15.

Best Movie Poster Warning: An American Carol for stating: "This movie may be offensive to children, young people, old people, in-the-middle people, some people on the right, all people on the left, terrorists, pacifists, war-mongers, fish mongers, Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics (though you'd have to prove it to them), the ACLU, liberals, conservatives, neo-cons, ex-cons, future cons, reublicans, democrats, libertarian, people of color, people of no color, English speakers, English-as-a-second-language speakers, non-speakers, men, women, more women, & ivy league professors. Native Americans should be okay.

Best Homage: American Teen for their design that was just a wee bit reminscent of The Breakfast Club.

Rotating License Plates Award: Goes to Bonneville for featuring the title car with Utah and Idaho plates.

Most Annoying Expression: Goes to Donny Osmond on the poster for College Road Trip. Actually, we might as well award the whole bunch of them - except the pig. Runner up goes to The Women.

Traumatic Female Close-Up Award: A three-way tie. The posters for All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Funny Games, and The Strangers.

The Ratatouille Pronunciation Guide Award: Goes to those posters that feel the need to teach us how to pronounce the film's title. This year, we have three winners: Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Igor, and W.

Best Attempt at Cashing in on Current Events: Goes to Henry Poole is Here for its imitation of the Shepard Fairey Obama poster.

Best Fake Critic Blurb: Goes to How to Be a Serial Killer for "It's time to start listening to the voices in your head!".

Drew Struzan Was Busy Award: Goes to Zack and Miri Make a Porno for its incredibly detailed artwork.

Best Poster to Display in a Bus Shelter: A tie between The Dark Knight and Blindness.

Questionable Sex Symbol Award: Goes to Carmine Famiglietti for Amexicano, three scary dudes for Bar Starz, and Robert De Niro for the UK quad of What Just Happened?.

Self Firing Gun Award: Goes to Keanu Reeves in the Street Kings poster for shooting his gun without ever touching the trigger.

We Really Didn't Need to See That Award: Goes to Larry the Cable Guy's armpit hair in the poster for Witless Protection. Runner up: You Don't Mess With the Zohan.

Best Way to Ruin a Poster - First Place: Zack and Miri Make a Porno. The UK quad completely tosses out the entire punchline of the original poster. Of course the MPAA tossed out the poster altogether.

Best Way to Ruin a Poster - Second Place: Four Christmases. By removing the legs for the UK quad we completely lose the joke about the dramatic difference in the height of the two stars.

Best Way to Ruin a Poster - Third Place: Humboldt County. For some reason the first poster, which was used for film festivals, was deemed unacceptable for its theatrical run. Instead of a man standing on a smoking joint we have a man standing on what appears to be a flimsy paper mache bridge.

Most Unfortunate Poster Hairstyle: Goes to The Last Mistress for making its lead actress look like a butthead.

Most Indecisive Posters: Goes to Leatherheads for not knowing whether it's a sports movie for men or a romance for women.

Most Contradictory Posters: Goes to Marley & Me for two completely incompatible taglines. The first one says "They had the perfect relationship until one thing came between them." The second one says "Their relationship wasn't going anywhere until one little thing tied it all together."

It's All in the Reflects Award: Goes to Flashbacks of a Fool, The Life Before Her Eyes, Heartbeat Detector, and (appropriately enough) Mirrors.

Oddest Punctuation Award: Goes to The Love Guru. Apparently, it is inappropriate to have an arrow pointing at someone's groin on a movie poster. So, the down arrow on Justin Timberlake's belly tattoo was changed to an exclamation mark.

Mirror Mayhem Award: Goes to The Lucky Ones and Pride and Glory. The first one has the stars reflected in a mirror but the letters on the guitar case are not reversed. The second one decided to flip the images of the stars, reversing the scar on Norton's face and, more obviously, reversing the text on Farrell's badge.

Happiest Ensemble Award: Goes to the conga line poster of Mamma Mia! - though no one is quite sure what Colin Firth is doing...

Best De-Americanization of a Poster: Goes to the international design for Stop-Loss. To market it to an international audience they removed the stars and stipes from the background, the US flag tattoo, and the ARMY t-shirt. They even got rid of the dog tags. It's no longer about the war in Iraq, it's a movie about friendship.

Most Original Credits: Goes to 27 Dresses.

Best Director Tie-In: Goes to the international Marley & Me poster that seems to be subtly reminding us that this film is by the director of The Devil Wears Prada. Runner-up goes to The Happening for alluding to M. Night Shyamalan's two biggest hits in the tagline.

Best In-Joke for Designers: Goes to the Australian poster for Mister Lonely that purposefully included the color codes as part of the design.

Best Spoiler on a Poster: Quarantine

and finally...

Dane Cook's Least Favorite Poster Award: Goes to My Best Friend's Girl for inspiring its star to verbally tear it apart on his blog. A sampling of his thoughts on the design: "The left side of my face seems to be melting off of my skull", "It looks like I'm wearing Maybelline Water Shine Diamonds Liquid lipstick", and "It's actually a close up shot of Tom Selleck's Magnum P.I. mustache they photo-slapped on my noggin".

Thanks for checking out this year's Internet Movie Poster Awards. We hope you enjoyed them. Have a good 2009!

Internet Movie Poster Awards - Featuring one of the largest collections of movie poster images on the web.